Well the day started off bright and sunny.... the ideal day to take off my sump and re-seal it... or so I thought!

The job started well and I was getting the bolts out quite easily until i come across one which had a snapped allen key in it :(

Then one that was rounded off... and then i realised there was even a missing bolt!

Nevermind... I took the sump off and sent my dad in search of some sump bolts to replace the missing one and also the damaged ones.

Sump off :)

Bottom of the block, you can see where the oil's been misting out when warm and covering the zorst and dogbone mount.

ok... so off I went to clean the mating surfaces and de-grease it :)

Now for the hard part, the oil filter.

I've never seen a filter this difficult to get to, but at least I could see it! so i hammered a screwdriver through it after failing with my chain oil filter removal tool.

It wouldn't budge :( I proper bent the screwdriver!

After many hours of swearing and going to halfords to buy a set of oil filter removal pliers, the filter finally came off! :) Victory is mine!

this still took 20 minutes even with the fancy pliers!

Now it's raining, so i've got the filter back on, but no sump :(

Looks like youre contemplating drinking the left over contents in that filter

British weather hey

job done... was a nightmare.

Basically, there are 4 awkward bolts, if you drop them, they go into the gearbox, lol.

I've had the sump on and off about 3 times now! then to top it all off, the oil pipe to the turbo was a nightmare and leaked :( So I had to re-seal that and I put some better bolts in there.

argh... still leaking, gonna check every single bolt again today...

managed to get some extra tightness on some of the bolts :) hope that does the trick! :)

Glad to see your sorting the issues it had mate, the sump was one thing i never got round to re-sealing. Looks like you had fun with it

As for the filter, the joys of modified cars and big engines in small engine bays

Look forward to seeing more progress

Ash

Hi Ash, glad to see you're keeping tabs on the project! would be nice to have the two 20v 6n's parked together at ultimate dubs next year? that's my goal anyways :)

Don't do what I did when I had to wrestle that oil filter off and forget to put the plug back in